Usually, hair is manually braided by a person other than the one who is obtaining a desired hair style. This braiding work requires considerable time and cost. Also, as the quality of such a manually braided hair style totally depends on the worker's skill, it may not be uniform.
Therefore, a hair braiding machine braiding a plurality of strands of hair into one braid mechanically was developed and filed in KIPO (Korea Industrial Property Office) on the Jan. 18, 2000 with Application No. 2000-4184.
As shown in FIGS. 1A and 1B, the hair braider generally; comprises a driving unit 200 and three hair accommodating members 100 mounted on the driving unit 200 and driven in a figure eight ‘8’ configuration by the driving unit 200. Each of the hair accommodating members accommodates each strands of hair to separate them from the other strands for the purpose of preventing hair strands from being tangled when a plurality of hair strands are braided each other.
On the top of each hair accommodating member 100 is installed a cap 106 shown in FIG. 2, which frictionally grips a bundle of hair with an elastic nozzle 106a thereof to tension it while hair is braided through ‘8’-shaped movement of each hair accommodating member 100, whereby uniformly-braided hair is obtained.
As mentioned above, it is required to maintain a proper tension on the strands of hair in a braiding process to get; uniformly-braided hair. While hair is braided by a figure eight movement of each hair accommodating member 100, the overall length of the hair strands accommodated in a hair accommodating member 100 is gradually shorter. Namely, the hair strands are drawn out through the nozzle 106a. However, if the friction between the nozzle 106a and the hair strands is excessive because of a smaller inner diameter of the nozzle 106a, it hinders the hair strands from being drawn out of the nozzle 106a smoothly, thereby tensioning the hair strands more excessively. This excessive tension on the hair strands gives pains to the person and might stop a motor of the driving unit 200 as well.
In addition, all of hair strings are not same in length, thus, short hair strings are abruptly released from the nozzle 106a if the tension on the hair strands is too excessive as explained above. Then, the released short hair strings are not woven with still united long hair, namely, they are rotated freely without being braided. These loosened hair strings give untidiness to the finished hair style.
Conversely, if the friction force is not sufficient, the hair strands cannot be held in a constant tension so that some hair strings are drawn out, through the nozzle 106a, more than the shortened length by braiding, which leads to bumpy braided hair. This also looks untidy.
Accordingly, it is required in braiding hair with a hair braiding machine that a cap mounted on the hair accommodating member should give a substantially constant and proper tension to accommodated hair until the end of hair is completely released through the cap from the hair accommodating member. A development of such a cap is very important subject for a hair braiding machine ensuring good performance and good quality of braided hair.